Homily for 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Feb. 7, 1988
Job 7: 1-4, 6-7
Mark 1: 29-39
St. Theresa, Bronx

“Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?  Are not his days those of a hireling?  My days …come to an end without hope” (Job 7: 1, 6).

Job is an intriguing book.  It’s about being human, about struggling to live a good life, about one’s relationship with God, about suffering.

Job is a God-fearing man.  He loses suddenly almost everything dear to him: children, wealth, health.  All that remains to him is his wife, and she nags him.  His friends pass judgment on him:  If all this has happened to you, God must be punishing you for some horrible sin.  So Job laments and demands justice of God.

Job rebuked by his wife and his friends

(source unknown)

Job’s story is our story.  At one time or another all of us feel like him:  “assigned months of misery, and troubled nights…” (7:3). This seems to be our human condition.  Job is portrayed as an upright man, but he’s beaten down by undeserved suffering.  If righteousness, personal integrity, cannot assure us of a reasonably happy life, what are we to do?  Is there no way out for us, no salvation?

Yes, sisters and brothers, there is a way of the suffering, pain, and despair that make up so much of our lives.  There is salvation from all those afflictions that fall upon us when we think we deserve better from life.  There is even salvation from afflictions that we do not deserve, for we are wise enuf to admit before God and one another our sinfulness.

Our way out and our salvation is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Paul was speaking of his own conduct when he wrote to the Corinthians:

I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak.  I have become all things to all, to save at least some.  All this I do for the sake of the good news (1 Cor 9:19,22-23).

But he could just as well have been speaking of Christ,

who did not count equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness: … he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him … and every tongue (shall) confess that Jesus Christ is Lord… (Phil 2:6-11). 

Jesus became one of us, the servant of all whom “everyone was looking for,” whom they “tracked down” like a fugitive (Mark 1:36-37).  He became weak like us, suffering the afflictions of our human condition—hunger, weariness, human hardheadedness, false friends, even death—a disgraceful death, falsely accused and abandoned.  Who was more righteous than he?  Who deserved suffering less than he?

Jesus didn’t stop preaching the good news, stop doing good in word and deed, in order to escape unjust punishment.  He was fully faithful to God his Father. His suffering was the path to new life, and God his Father raised him to new life and made him the source of eternal life for all of us weak and sinful folks.

In Mark’s Gospel last Sunday and today we’ve seen Jesus healing people.  When he exorcises the possessed, the demons try to proclaim him as “God’s Holy One” (Mark 1:24). Why does Jesus silence them?  Because his identity as God’s Holy One doesn’t depend upon his power to work wonders.  It would be misleading—devilish—to have people think so.  Jesus’ miracles are signs of the divine power to restore life, to heal sin, to make men and women whole.  But Jesus knows that he must himself suffer.  He must become weak, must be one of us, must be all things to everyone, even unto death.  In Mark’s Gospel, the only person who can loudly and publicly identify Jesus is the centurion at the foot of the cross:  “Truly this was God’s Son” (15:39).  For Jesus to be seen for who he is, he must be crucified.  Only one who has been in Job’s shoes, so to say: one who has been lonely: one who has suffered “the agony of defeat”—only such a person can know “the thrill of victory.”  Only such a person can heal the broken, forgive the sinner, bring life out of the grave.

This is the good news that Jesus came to proclaim.  We are not just “dust in the wind,” as a #1 song had it about 10 years ago.  We are not just “slaves longing for the shade, creatures living without hope,” as Job put it this morning (7:2,6).  No, we are God’s dear children, marked in Baptism for eternal life.  Jesus is God’s witness to that.